[Skarg]

I too tend to think of characters in terms of how much experience they have had and what level of ability they have gained from that, and think that some talents might only be available from having a certain amount of experience.


I also tend to think of attribute totals in a similar way for typical humans - most non-combat types are 28-32 points, capable but not very experienced people I tend to expect to be 32-34 points, experienced capable people 35-36 points, very experienced and capable people 37-38 points.

After that, as TippetsTX mentioned, there's a divide between the old XP system and a system that like the new XP system tends to top out at about 39-42 points. In that case, the most experienced and capable people are 39-42 points.

In the old system, there were higher and higher tiers, which got more and more excessive and overpowering of the lesser tiers, and our groups' experience of that tended to be an unhappy one, though like TippetsTX I see some room to stretch a bit higher than 40-42 without the worst problems (and magic items tend to be a greater problem anyway, but that's another topic).


I notice though that I tend to think of experience as only one thing that could give someone high attributes. I think different people have different gifts as well, and so I don't see attribute totals as a direct indicator of experience level.

And so I'd tend to want something else to determine what certain experience-requiring talents took something other than starting IQ or XP and/or time to achieve.

Two existing talents: Captain and Strategist, have prerequisites listed in terms of years of appropriate experience. I think I'd tend to want something similar for talents which seem to me to represent abilities that would take experience and/or special training to develop.


In practice, what I do is make NPCs that have talents I think are appropriate for their experience. And an alarm light goes off when some people start suggesting characters that look weird to me (e.g. hcobb's "typical" expert 32-point javelineer or knife hobbit who are doing other cheesy attempts to find annoying counterintuitive tactics).


However as I keep thinking about it and Tywyll's thoughts about Weapon Expert and Fencer, I think I have separate qualms about that talent. One issue is just the way it combines with a 32-point character to mean that starting characters can be experts, but all such characters must be ST 9 or less... that mainly bothers me because that filtering for weak experts only seems like a weird gamey effect.

And the whole effect on XP costs, though it sounds like no one on this thread is actually using the new 500 XP cost to learn a talent point thing.


Spells I tend to want to address on a case by case basis and think about whether they're known and taught by and to whom and in what versions with what modifications, and I don't know that I'd need/want more than that... but maybe I would if I had spells I felt represented a lot of experience rather than just high IQ.

And again, I find some new additions might be most likely to bother me in that way. Especially the new Staff spells, which I want to mess with anyway. Those do seem to be written with a notion that they (and the staff mana stat) are supposed to reflect wizardly experience somehow (e.g. you can only buy staff mana with XP). As such it does feel a little cheesy/gamey/off to "rush" the high staff spells at creation... though I sort of see Tywyll's point that it doesn't really gain that much, especially if staff mana cannot be bought without XP (and as always, if the new 500 XP advantage is house-ruled away).

I think my main annoyances with the new staff spells are actually about combining zap powers into the same spells most wizards will want in order to get staff mana. If I house rule those apart, that reduces my concern...

Comparing to check for a similar sort of issue as I feel with Weapon Expert. For example, if I compare two 32-point wizard PCs, one IQ 12 who can't learn Staff III, and one IQ 13 starting with Staff III, I see that as they both gain experience, the IQ 12 one will need to learn Staff III before they can put XP into staff mana... hmm... I think that shows me where the "edge" of the problem is for me. It's about a beginning character starting with a magic IQ number enough to start with a talent/spell that represents being much less of a beginner (moreso than I think would be accounted for naturally by the higher IQ score). With Staff III I don't see it actually being that much of a big deal though because the main benefit is being able to spend XP at 200 XP for one staff mana, which isn't even very efficient until you're a higher-point-level wizard anyway).